


A Place Like This

by Nerissa



Category: Original Work
Genre: Casefic elements, F/F, Old West, Shared History
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-15 09:03:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13610040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: Everybody is full of suggestions for what Charlotte should do with the saloon now that her husband is no longer alive to help her run it.Charlotte has her own ideas about what she should do, and the woman who just strolled through her front door features prominently in all of them.





	A Place Like This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonster/gifts).



New Canaan.

Even the _name_ spoke of desolation.

The look of the place did nothing to contradict this impression. Grey-gold in midwinter light, it might have boasted a certain natural charm if only the slightest breeze had not carried mouthfuls of the plains between the teeth of the unwary. The woman who alit from the stagecoach at midday inhaled one such mouthful, and quickly spat it back to the road where it belonged. She wanted as little of the place as possible on her person; to ingest it was out of the question.

Her mouth cleared of prairie dirt, she considered the settlement of New Canaan with even more than her usual dispassion. A main road ran north-south and was intersected at intervals by lesser roads running east-west. Each of these thoroughfares wound out lazily into the wilds beyond, where thin curls of smoke and dark blobs in the shape of livestock spoke to the grim industry of the farmers who had settled there.

It was not the farms that drew her interest, though, but the nearest intersection. A sign on one of the buildings swung despondently in the wind, white letters standing out in sharp relief on glossy black: _Gregory’s Saloon. Bed, board and hot bath_.

She could not have resisted the promise of that sign even if she had wanted to.

She picked up her case and started down the street.

 

* * *

 

“Of course, your _first_ mistake was marrying a man who got himself killed.”

Charlotte Gregory summoned every scrap of self-preservation she possessed and used those tatters to marshal her thoughts and bridle her tongue.

“That’s . . . an interesting perspective, to be sure, Mrs. Ames. But you do understand, don’t you, that I didn’t know he was going to get himself killed when I married him? It’s not exactly something a body can foresee.”

Mrs. Ames scrunched up her face beneath the improbable width of her cartwheel hat. The effect this had on her powder was regrettable, since no amount of doctoring could conceal the years she had spent in western winters. The wear was writ in every line, and because Charlotte kept the saloon warm enough for shirtsleeves an unfortunate combination of perspiration and talc left a dry riverbed’s worth of creases all over the face of Mrs. Ames.

Charlotte found the sight strangely soothing. It gave her a glimpse of the human woman Mrs. Ames must once have been, before she married the Mayor and made it her duty to make misery in the lives of honest people trying to run a saloon.

“I suppose that’s so,” Mrs. Ames said doubtfully.  Then she considered the saloon with all the desperation of a soul who requires argument to make her place in the world feel worth holding on to. “But what do you even imagine you could do with this place, now Harry’s gone?”

“That will depend on the wishes of his family.”

“Oh yes that’s right. They’re back East, aren’t they? A brother or cousin or something like that?”

Charlotte’s hands twisted in the cloth she held and she applied it, with sudden vigor, to the smooth dark top of the bar.

“Yes.”

“You’ll have written them, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And no word back?”

“No word yet.”

“Well, a fine way to treat family, I must say,” Mrs. Ames said, with judgemental sympathy for Charlotte in her state of abandonment. “I am sure nobody would think less of you if you decided to proceed without their counsel. After all he was your husband, and you have your future to think of. Certainly you can’t want to spend it here under any circumstance!”

“No?” Charlotte’s hand stilled ominously in its scrubbing, but Mrs. Ames did not heed the danger.

“Oh of course you’ve kept on very bravely, as I’m sure he’d have wished, but you can’t intend to run it forever.”

“Can’t I?” Charlotte’s temper slipped, bright and sharp, in the noncommittal gloom of a saloon at midday.

“Well without a man to hold the title, you must see it looks a bit—“

But Providence, in its immutable wisdom, spared Mrs. Ames the completion of her judgement and the wrath of its target that would otherwise have followed. The door to the saloon swung open at just that moment, arresting the curiosity of all within.

And none was more openly curious than Mrs. Ames herself.

“Who in the world could—well upon my soul it’s a woman. But what is she wearing?”

“Trousers,” said Charlotte. In that moment her world narrowed to a pinpoint of light that centered and glowed on the spectre in the doorway. “She’s wearing trousers.”

“Mercy,” Mrs. Ames breathed. “Have you ever seen the like?”

But Charlotte was spared having to answer, because the woman in trousers, having taken a noncommittal survey of the room, advanced to the bar with her travelling case in one hand, the other extended in greeting.

“Good day,” she said, “have you a room to let?”

“Yes, of course.” Charlotte nodded to the staircase in the corner. “Would you . . . I mean, I will need to make up your bed for you, but if you would like to take your—your case upstairs, I can attend to that directly.”

“I’m sure I’d be glad to do so.” The stranger was on the verge of obliging her hostess when Mrs. Ames, too long ignored, decided to appoint herself a role in the scene.

“Good afternoon, Madam,” she said, and gave Charlotte a look so sharpened by expectation that Charlotte, unwilling to risk the repercussions of pretending ignorance, performed the introduction.

“Our Mayor’s wife; Mrs. Godfrey Ames.”

“Ma’am,” the stranger said politely, and touched the brim of her hat. This act had the pleasant result of thoroughly discombobulating Mrs. Ames.

“Er—yes. Quite. May I just say you are welcome here, and . . . I am sorry, I do not have the pleasure of your name.”

“An oversight I will remedy,” the stranger decided, “just as soon as I determine what it’s going to be.” Then she flashed a smile that cut through the gloom, nodded again, and took her case up the stairs at the back of the room. Charlotte hurried along behind.

 

* * *

 

The room Charlotte chose was at the very back of the saloon, the farthest from the stairs. Her new tenant set the case down and took a considering look around at the narrow brass bed with its bright white cover, the scrubbed wood floors, minute commode and plain crockery basin and pitcher centered on top.

“It’s not bad at all,” she said. Charlotte nodded; a quick, nervous jerk of her chin.

“Yes, it’s very pleasant, and you’ll find it warm, although I should warn you it lacks privacy.”

“Ah.” The room’s new tenant frowned. “I see. Even so, this should do nicely.”

“I can bring hot water if you like,” Charlotte offered. “It must have—that is, was it a long . . . have you come far?”

The stranger turned to stare at Charlotte with something between amusement and bewilderment. Charlotte clung to the doorknob as if braced for the necessity of slamming it shut between them, but after a heavy pause the other woman only said,

“It was long, yes.” She set her case on the bed, rubbing her thumb over a latch as if checking its integrity before snapping both open. “I had meant to arrive a week ago. Matters interfered.”

“I’m so sorry,” Charlotte said softly.

The woman in front of her, heedless of scrutiny, removed her hat and smoothed out a length of heavy, fair hair. The sun filtering in through the back window wasn’t yet at sufficient angle to fill the space, but even so enough of it filtered in to paint the lodger a shade of pale gold that stirred every nerve ending in Charlotte’s body as they had not been stirred in half a decade.

A thin, despairing sigh escaped her and the woman by the bed snapped around as if summoned by the very hint of Charlotte’s pain.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Charlotte still clung to the knob. “I will be . . . that is, I’m fine.” Her face softened. “Now.”

The lodger’s face softened in response.

“Well then. If I am to be your tenant, what am I to call you?”

“I’m Charlotte Gregory,” Charlotte murmured. “You should call me . . . I’m Mrs. Gregory.”

“Easy enough to remember,” her lodger said, with something very like humor. “Would you like to call me Mimi?”

Charlotte frowned.

“Naturally, if that’s your name. But hadn’t I better call you Miss . . . what family name should I use?”

“That will be more complicated. Let’s not worry about it yet. For now, if you could manage some hot water, I’d like a basin’s worth.”

“Not—not a bath?” Charlotte suggested, and this time Mimi did laugh.

“Not yet. But you are an attentive hostess. I promise the moment I have need of a bath I will call for you.”

Something in the way she said it sent waves of heat down Charlotte’s spine. She backed out the door with no more than a muttered, “pardon me” and fled down the hall, back to the main room of the saloon.

 

* * *

 

Mrs. Ames, reliable in all matters pertaining to private communication, had not wasted time in spreading the word that a fair-haired stranger, a woman in men’s clothing with a man’s hat on her head and a scarf around her neck, like something out of the penny pages, had taken up residence in the saloon. Inside of three hours the whole town knew.

That night they had the busiest run on the place that Charlotte could remember since she and Harry had moved west to take it over. She put both her regular girls through a gruelling pace and sent a boy out to the Shipley place to tell little Franny that she was needed, too. All four of them were rushed off their feet to the point that she would not have known when Mimi came down from her room if it weren’t for the change in the crowd. The quiet spread like lazy fire through the room until it flooded the floor as her lodger reached the final step.

Mimi had changed out of her dust-caked travelling clothes and washed her face and neck. Her hair was combed up into a simple knot, and she was definitely wearing trousers.

She regarded the room with such lazy amusement that Charlotte burned with envy. If she had the ability to stare at a group of people like that, like they were the ones she had come to stare at instead of the other way around . . . well. Charlotte would be a much different person.

“Mrs. Gregory,” Mimi said politely, “is it possible to take supper in an hour? I would like to have a walk, and then the bath you promised before I dine.”

She twinkled at Charlotte in a way that should not have been fit for company.

“I—yes, certainly,” Charlotte said, painfully aware of the crush and complete lack of table. She’d have to make a place at the bar, and serving her, staring at her . . . “Yes I can have supper for you in an hour.”

“Mmm.” Mimi looked at her searchingly. “Mrs. Gregory?”

Charlotte could not meet her stare. She looked down at her knuckles, pink and raw from the scrub water and the steam in their little kitchen, taxed beyond the reserves of its ability in the feeding of the unexpected crowd. She remembered a time when they had looked very different.

She hid them under her apron, but not quick enough that they could not have been seen.

“Yes?”

“Are you safe?”

Whatever question Charlotte had expected, it was not that. She jerked back in alarm, staring into the calm patience of her tenant’s face. It might have been only they two in the bar, for all the heed Mimi paid to half the town clustered at her back. To her, those people might as well have been furniture.

Charlotte’s envy sparked brighter and fiercer than before.

“I can’t—what would make you—I’m fine. Thank you. Your bath will be ready in an hour, and supper after it.”

She hurried away into the kitchen before Mimi had a chance to reply.

 

* * *

 

After leaving the saloon, a woman who had not yet settled on a surname headed west, toward the sunset. Winter sat brittle and shallow over the town and even the orange glow of the evening sky was not proof against the season. Cold squeezed Mimi’s face, drawing her skin taut and dry, but did not settle in the bones. Even so, she ducked into one place of business with an audible sigh of relief at the warmth afforded by a squat, pot-bellied coal stove that sat in the outer office.

She lingered there rather longer than her business required, at last leaving with a list of addresses and considerable reluctance. She mapped a new path around the town, investigating with every appearance of aimless wandering. Her boots hit hard and rang hollow as she walked, and she cast a dark, wavering shadow across the frozen dirt. Altogether the atmosphere of the town at sunset was one of such desolation that she wondered how a place like this could ever draw a young couple away from everything they’d ever known and loved.

“You the one?”

She whipped around, hand halfway to her belt before she registered that the man behind her was a stranger and wore no guns. Rather than drop her hand she let it settle on her hip, like that had been her intention all along. The subtlety was clearly wasted on him, though; the man’s neck was as thick as his jaw, and his eyes set a little too close together for good looks. Aside from that, she had to concede he had the form of a fellow that would set many girls aflutter.

If they were that sort of girl.

“Am I what one?”

“The one came into the saloon today in men’s get-up and took herself a room.”

“Ah! That one.”

“Yeah.”

A silence stretched out invitingly between them. She let it widen. He shifted his feet, scowling.

“Well? Are you?”

“Am I . . ?”

“That one.”

She smiled at the tall, wide man who wore no guns and did not like to let a silence yawn unfilled.

“If I am not, it would be a remarkable coincidence of dress, don’t you think?”

He squinted, as though the ability to complete the inference on his own not only eluded him but gave him a headache by its very absence.

“Eh?”

This was not even sport. Mimi sighed.

“Yes, I am that one. And you are . . ?”

“John Ellsworth. I keep a ranch north of here.” He paused, and when she was not inclined to fill the silence he went on. “Big place. Sheep, you know.”

“I don’t.”

“Eh?”

“Know sheep. I am not a farmer, and I don’t much care for mutton, so . . .” she trailed off, inviting him to draw his own conclusion. Instead he blinked again, and must have decided that the conversation in its current vein was unprofitable because he aggressively changed the topic.

“Are you staying long?”

She considered for a moment, then spoke with delicate lack of emphasis.

“I am afraid, Mr. Ellsworth, that I don’t see what concern it is of yours.”

“Well if you’re staying at the saloon it’s some concern of mine. Mrs. Gregory and I are about to come to an understanding.”

At this confidence Mrs. Gregory’s tenant adopted an expression that suggested she took a rather keener interest in Mrs. Gregory than she did sheep.

“Oh?”

“Yes. And naturally, I do not like the lady I intend to make my wife to continue in her present situation. It’s hardly respectable. So the sooner you see fit to leave, that she may leave the saloon, the better I will like it.”

Mimi considered a distant point somewhere over John Ellsworth’s shoulder.

“And what,” she wondered at last, “do you imagine will become of the saloon when the woman you propose to make Mrs. Ellsworth is no longer running it?”

He waved his hand impatiently.

“Sell it, I suppose. What does it matter?”

Mimi was still frowning into the distance, as if Mr. Ellsworth’s presence were merely incidental to her own role in the conversation.

“Yes, that’s really the question, isn’t it?” she murmured.

“Eh?” said Mr. Ellsworth again, but Mimi had lost interest.

“Good day to you, Mr. Ellsworth. Good luck with the—er—sheep.” And she headed down the street in the direction of the saloon.

 

* * *

 

When Mimi returned, she found the crowds had thinned considerably and Charlotte was waiting for her in a lather of temper.

“Your bath is upstairs,” she said, and marched Mimi up the back steps, down the hall and into a room choked with steam.

“It looks a little hot,” Mimi drawled. Charlotte, heedless of the complaint, planted her fists on her hips and lowered her voice to an enraged whisper.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Look, Charlie,” Mimi said gently. “You know exactly who I am. Now, you don’t have to tell me what’s got you all bothered if you’d rather not say. But I did come all this way and I’ve put up with an awful lot of cloak and dagger nonsense into the bargain, so can you at least tell me why you sent for me to come here if you weren’t going to tell me what got you scared enough to ask me to help you?”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Charlotte whispered, fear blotting all anger from her voice. “None of it. Don’t talk about—about knowing me, or any of it. I told you, it’s not private here. It’s not safe.”

“Is that why you told me to pretend I didn’t know you when I arrived? Because that’s caused a lot more trouble than I think it could really be worth.”

“Yes. No. I mean, it’s part of it . . . for the love of God, why did you have to make such a _spectacle_ of yourself?”

“The trousers? That’s just common sense. They’re so much more practical than a skirt. Don’t tell me women out here don’t wear them too.”

“Not into town, they don’t! And certainly not arriving on the stage. You stood out a mile. And then you stayed _here_ instead of the hotel, so naturally everybody’s paying much too close attention, so . . . oh it’s hopeless. You never should have come.”

Mimi eased her arms around Charlotte’s shoulders and pulled her close. Charlotte stiffened, then softened into the embrace.

“I’ve been so frightened,” she whimpered. “I thought maybe, if you only came . . . but it was foolish of me.”

“No, honey,” Mimi promised. “You were scared. Anybody could see that much. It stood out a mile. If there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it. Simple as that.”

She slid a look toward the tub.

“You really did draw me a bath.”

“Of course. You’re paying for it.”

Mimi bit her lip. Her eyes danced with a gentle, easy mischief.

“Is . . . service included?”

Charlotte stifled a nervous giggle with her palms. Then she saw Mimi was still watching her expectantly, and she shook her head.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I mean, I couldn’t.”

Mimi stared across the steam, all-seeing, so patient it made Charlotte’s teeth hurt.

“Please, Sa—Mimi. I can’t.”

“What’s stopping you?”

Charlotte shook her head. It was all so close. Too nearly perfect, just like it had been years ago. Tears lanced the back of her eyes and she pressed the heels of her hands against them. Her shoulders shook . . .

All at once Mimi was there, her hands slipping round Charlotte’s waist, her mouth warm against Charlotte’s neck, and it wasn’t right, wasn’t fair, that this woman could just walk up to her like that and play her body like it was the gleaming upright piano that had sat in her front parlor since she was a girl, so she could lay her fingers anywhere she liked and make music flow from under Charlotte’s skin . . .

“S-s-“

“Stop?” Mimi asked softly. She trailed tiny kisses up Charlotte’s neck and ended at her earlobe. “If you want me to stop, say so.”

But she couldn’t. It would be a lie. And she couldn’t lie here, in the place she and Harry had run away to. It would have felt like compounding a betrayal. So she looked up into Mimi’s face, the perfect clear green of her eyes and the elegant regularity of her face, like something in a painting on a museum wall, noble and remote and somehow sprung to life and pinked all over with steam.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

“Thank God,” Mimi whispered. “Neither do I.”

 

* * *

 

A considerable time later, the two looked at each other from opposite ends of a much-cooled tub. Charlotte’s hair was plastered in muddled curls to her cheeks, whereas Mimi’s was still piled mostly on her head. She regarded Charlotte with fond exasperation.

“You can’t even look me in the eye.”

Charlotte squirmed.

“It’s because of where you were looking at me earlier,” she said primly. “I can’t look anybody in the eye who . . . who looked at me . . . kissed me . . . I mean. There.”

Mimi threw back her head with a roar of laughter.

“You are the _limit_ , Charlotte! It wasn’t even the first time, and here you’re acting like you never imagined it was possible. You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

Charlotte’s smile wobbled.

“I don’t know. I don’t _think_ so, but then some days, when I think of all that’s happened, I don’t even remember what it felt like to be me before this.”

Mimi nodded.

“Yes, all right, I can see how that would be. But was it marrying Harry that did that, or coming out here with him? I told you not to do it, Charlie. He was an awful selfish bastard, always. Never did understand how you couldn’t see that.”

“I did,” Charlotte said frankly. “But I suppose in some ways—other ways—he reminded me of you. It seemed like a way I could have you for my own.”

Mimi looked at her in real consternation.

“Oh, Charlie—”

Charlotte smiled, still crooked.

“It’s all right. All done now. Can’t change it . . . look, though, would you like some supper? I’m hungry. And if you’ve been out running all over town today, you must be too.”

And Mimi, on thinking it over, had to admit that she was.

 

* * *

 

They ate in Charlotte’s room. Charlotte brought up a tiny table and laid it with a crisp white cloth, polished silver and clean china. Then she served up a small roast prairie chicken with a modest assortment of root vegetables clustered round it and they squished down across from each other, knees bumping together under the cloth, and fell on the food like two girls at school sneaking a meal after dark.

“Dear God it’s good,” Mimi muttered, once she’d blunted the edge of her appetite. “Could you always cook like this?”

“Somewhat. I got better being out here, though. More opportunity to practice.”

“Harry had the devil’s own luck,” Mimi complained. “He got you and your cooking and . . . well I don’t envy him the saloon, it seems a static way to make a living, but he had more than enough of what I wanted to make me hate him for it.”

Charlotte smiled sadly at the woman who sat across the table from her.

“He didn’t have everything, Mimi.”

“No?” Mimi squinted at her in suspicion. “What, did you store up loose change in the sugar bowl without his knowing? That’s the sort of thing people could put over on Harry. Something right in front of his nose and he’d never see it.”

“Not money, idiot,” Charlotte said fondly. “I mean, how I felt for him . . . it was never more than what I felt for—” She faltered. Marshalled her nerve. Pressed on. “It wasn’t what I felt for you.”

Mimi set her fork down and stared.

“Not ever?”

“Not once. He knew. He said it was all right; he’d already taken enough of yours without asking me for the rest of it.”

“Hrm.” Mimi looked down at her plate. “Surprising depths to Harry, then.”

Her tone was light; almost insolent. But when she looked up again her eyes were water-bright, and an answering sob hitched in Charlotte’s chest.

“I am sorry I had to leave you,” she whispered. “I didn’t want that part. And when I saw this might be a chance to see you again . . . God forgive me, but I was only glad.”

Mimi shoved the table aside so fiercely, it was pure accident of placement that no dishes broke. In another moment she had her arm around Charlotte’s waist, dragged her up from the chair and looked down into her face.

Charlotte sucked in her breath, sharp with expectation. Mimi looked at her searchingly; quizzical. Then she tilted Charlotte’s chin up and kissed the corner of her mouth, first soft, then firmer, hungrier, demanding more.

Charlotte went up on her tiptoes and gave it.

Mimi backed her up against the bed, unbuttoning Charlotte’s blouse as she went. She grabbed roughly, almost greedily, for her breasts, lifting them clear of the chemise and bowing her head to mark each with her teeth. Charlotte’s thin shriek split the silence of the room.

“Too much?” Mimi asked. Charlotte shook her head, wide-eyed, breathless.

“No. No, it . . . it’s good.”

So Mimi bore her down on the bed to repeat the attention on each until Charlotte was sobbing, arching in answer to pure need. Her every hesitation beside the bath had disappeared. In its place was only an empty space in her chest and a keening ache between her legs. She needed Mimi to fix both.

Mimi braced her arms on either side of Charlotte’s head and smiled down at her.

“D’you remember the first time we did this?”

A slow blush crept up Charlotte’s neck.

“You were so damn noisy.” Mimi ducked her head to trace a thin row of kisses across the clear ridge of Charlotte’s collarbones. “I thought I might have to put a pillow over your face.”

“I’ll be quiet this time.”

“Mmm. If I used a pillow we could be sure of it.”

“You’re _not_ using a pillow,” Charlotte scowled. “I want to see your face.”

“You’re just trying to get me to kiss you here again, aren’t you?” Mimi teased, and Charlotte sucked her breath in because at the word _here_ Mimi’s hand rested over the layers of fabric that dipped into the apex of her thighs.

“Oh,” she gasped, and arched into the firmness of her palm in such a way that chased all humor from Mimi’s face.

“Oh honey,” she said gently. “Do you . . . I mean, you really . . .”

Charlotte pressed both hands to her face and almost wept in desperation.

“Yes. Right now. Please, Sally. _Please_.”

Her slip over the name escaped her own notice, but not Mimi’s. From that moment there wasn’t a thing Charlotte could have demanded of her that she would not have done, this one included. She slid her palms up the length of Charlotte’s stockinged legs and parted them when she reached her thighs.

“You want your stockings on?”

“I don’t care. I just—want—you.”

She lifted her hips in blank frustration and put her hands down to reach for what lay between them, scrabbling too early for a release that Mimi fully intended should take all night for her to find.

“All right,” Mimi said. “But no getting ahead of ourselves. We’re going to do this at my pace, or not at all. Understood?”

Charlotte nodded, determined to do whatever it took, though her eyes widened when Mimi took her wrists in hand and lined them up with the brass rails of her headboard. She unbuttoned Charlotte’s garters and stripped off her stockings, which she used to tie her wrists firmly in place.

“I’m the only one who gets to touch you right now,” she whispered, then settled down in the pile of Charlotte’s skirts to press her palms against the core of her and stroke the damp, hot desire waiting there.

“My poor sweeting,” she said, tender with promise. “What do you want me to do? Tell me, Charlotte.”

“Just—just touch me, please? I want to feel you there. I want . . . I want the last five years back. I want to have stayed with you when you asked me to.”

Mimi’s caress trembled and stilled. She resumed stroking after a moment, no longer teasing or light. She bore down firmly, strokes coming quicker, sharper. Charlotte whimpered into the room, pressing up against the pressure as something built, bright and sure, centering on that point right between . . .

Mimi turned her hand, altering the angle so the pressure eased. Charlotte cried out in something close to agony.

“No, please don’t stop.”

“Shh, Charlie. Trust me.”

So Charlotte relaxed, and Mimi, as reward, slid two fingers inside her. Charlotte opened her legs in eager welcome and nearly sobbed in gratitude at the gentle stretch and fulfillment.

“More?” Mimi wondered, beginning an easy rhythm with the two fingers she held inside her. Charlotte nodded. So Mimi slid a third finger in and Charlotte gasped, her eyes bright and starry in the lowering candle light.

“You like that?”

“Mnng,” Charlotte whimpered. Mimi continued fucking her hand into Charlotte, steady, unhurried, as the pressure built again.

This time it came slower; sweeter. In response, Charlotte’s breath came faster. Still Mimi didn’t rush, but as Charlotte’s desire wet her palm she added a fourth finger and smiled at the noise that rolled out of Charlotte into the soft yellow glow of her bedroom.

“That’s my good girl.”

Her left hand kept up the steady rhythm, bearing down and stretching her until Charlotte’s chest started to heave with desperate sobs. She arched her back, pushing up, greedy for more. Mimi didn’t miss a beat but placed her other hand gently over the crinkled bud at the top of Charlotte’s sex so she could stroke her inside and out.

“Easy, sweeting,” she said quietly. “It’s coming. You need to pace yourself.”

But Charlotte could only weep in frustration for something so close, yet just beyond her reach. She tugged at the stockings around her wrists and seemed genuinely surprised that the knots held. Mimi smiled.

“I told you,” she said simply. “My turn.”

She made the most of it, watching Charlotte’s face as she continued to fuck all four fingers into her and stroked her clit, a gentle, remorseless pressure within and without, building, Charlotte’s stomach tightening, until suddenly it broke over her in a tingling wave, rolling up from her toes to center clear and bright between her legs.

Mimi watched hungrily as Charlotte scrunched her face, eyes shut, mouth open, breath coming in stuttering staccato gasps. Her muscles clutched at Mimi’s fingers, fluttered around them in pretty gratitude, thirsty and sated by turns.

Mimi kept her palm pressed firmly over Charlotte’s clit, keeping up a rhythm of short, firm strokes. As soon as Charlotte relaxed into the bed she picked up speed again. Charlotte’s eyes flew open.

“What—”

“Shh. Trust me, all right?”

“But—”

Charlotte shook her head in confusion, then gasped as the second wave hit her out of nowhere, hotter and more demanding than the first. She whimpered through it and when she realized Mimi meant to force another from her she almost sobbed.

“I can’t—wait, please, it—”

“Yes you can. You’ll see. Let me do this, Charlie.”

So Charlotte rode dizzying waves through three, four, five more, until she could not even open her eyes, until she was boneless and breathless and hiccupping helplessly, and the sixth could wring from her nothing louder than whimpers and more tears. Only when that one had passed, and Charlotte was soft and pliant on the bed, did Mimi crawl up to press kisses all over her breasts, dewy with perspiration.

“My sweet, good girl,” she whispered, kissing each of Charlotte’s eyelids. “Oh my love, look at me. Was it so very bad for you?”

Indignation gave Charlotte the strength to lift her head that gratitude had not.

“ _Bad_? Oh! _Oh_! It was . . . that was . . .”

But adjectives had been swept away in the tidal wave of her own release. So Mimi had to be content with freeing her wrists and drawing both of Charlotte’s arms around her neck.

“We’ve a lot of time to make up for on both sides,” she murmured, as the candles burned down to stubs around them. “But I think it’s safe to say that was a start.”

 

* * *

 

The rest of the night melted away in a blur of smoking candles, and the smell of sweat and sex sweetened with beeswax. When they finally curled up against each other the sky had begun to pale, and neither had the strength to consider doing more than drawing the coverlet up around them both before they slept.

They had not even five hours’ sleep to their names when the sun made itself known, and the requisite greeting went up from a nearby chicken coop, forcing them both awake well before either of them would have preferred.

“That damn rooster’s going to catch his death if he opens his goddamned beak once more before I’ve had my coffee,” Mimi snarled, dragging the coverlet over their heads.

Charlotte laughed, bright and clear as the sky that hung beyond the window, and batted the quilt back to smile across the pillow at Mimi.

“That’s . . .” her voice softened under the weight of memory and mourning. “That’s what Harry used to say.”

Mimi’s anger at the rooster melted into something more solemn. She propped her head up on her fist, considering.

“You miss him.”

A creeping, cold sorrow settled under the blanket.

“Oh yes. Every day.”

Mimi settled her hand over Charlotte’s stomach, a slim line of warmth that cut through the ice of her grief.

“How did it happen? You didn’t tell me.”

Charlotte tugged the bedsheet up a little higher.

“It . . . a storm came up. He must have become disoriented. Went off the path, down a mineshaft.”

“He was out walking in a storm?”

“Riding.”

One of Mimi’s eyebrows crept up and Charlotte squirmed under her obvious scepticism.

“There wasn’t a storm when he set out, of course. He wasn’t . . . Harry could be reckless, of course. But not that way. He’d an invitation to visit John Ellsworth, and the storm took him by surprise. He never came back.”

“Hmm.”

“Why? I mean, I understand why you might ask, but . . . why do you look like that?”

Mimi shook her head.

“I don’t know. Look at it my way though. A lout of a farmer aspires to take you away from the thing that made you happy, and Harry’s death gives him the illusion of opportunity. It doesn’t sit right. Besides, I know a few things I haven’t told you yet, and in combination with the things I have . . . let’s say that I don’t like how it looks.”

Charlotte frowned.

“What sort of things?”

“Property things,” Mimi said vaguely. “I looked into it yesterday, and it was all quite illuminating. I only need to check one more thing, and then I think we’ll be in a position to work out our next step.” She shoved the coverlet back and cursed as her feet hit the floor.

“Christ that’s cold. Look, I need to ride out this morning. D’you mind starting breakfast while I’m gone? If anybody should come by to ask about me while I’m away, just say as far as you know I’m not up yet. It’s best if that’s all they think you know.”

Charlotte looked at her in sudden lively apprehension as Mimi began re-assembling her outfit from the previous day, dragging it on piece by piece.

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Just going to have a little chat with somebody, is all. Make sure we understand each other.”

Charlotte clutched the covers tighter.

“You’re going to see John, aren’t you? Please don’t. I don’t . . . why do you need to?”

“Because you’re scared of him. I could let the law handle it otherwise, except you’re afraid. No other reason you’d have told me to come out here as a stranger and pretend I didn’t know you. You’ve always had the most ridiculous instinct for things like that and I’d be a fool not to pay attention to it now. I only wish you’d give yourself a little more credit for it, and I wish to God you’d told Harry what you felt about Ellsworth while he could still have made some use of it.”

Charlotte bunched the covers under her chin.

“I tried. I told him something about John bothered me, only I didn’t know what, or why, so when I said it out loud it sounded so silly. Without you here to make him listen to reason he just . . . oh it was so foolish. He wouldn’t listen.”

“Ass,” Mimi muttered. “No I guess he wouldn’t. We had it sorted, didn’t we? You, me and Harry. We worked all right together. Then Harry had to go and fuck it up. But I won’t let him fuck it up for you and me anymore, Charlie. I’m going to fix it.”

She paused on the threshold.

“Where can I get a horse?”

 

* * *

 

The horse Charlotte directed her to was nothing to write home about, but then, Mimi didn’t plan to write home about any of this. She checked her guns and rode north of town to a ranch whose name she already knew, whose owner she had known about before she ever packed her bags for New Canaan.

She found John Ellsworth cursing the pump, which had frozen in the cold. He had the lid off the well and was contriving to draw up a bucket of water. He did not hear her approach, which suited her just fine; it gave her time to note that he had a rifle within reach, so she considered it wise to balance the barrel of her gun over her forearm and take aim at his head before she spoke.

“Place seems a little deserted for this time of day.”

“Christ almighty!” Ellsworth staggered around in a circle to face her. “What are you doing here?”

Mimi didn’t answer. She looked around with every appearance of casual interest.

“I was only remarking how odd it was that a working ranch wouldn’t have any ranch hands out at this hour . . . nor sheep, that I can see. All gone, are they?”

Ellsworth frowned.

“I thought you said you didn’t know sheep.”

“Oh, I don’t. But I do know a thing or two about bad deals, and the sort of people who make them. Sold off a lot of your livestock, haven’t you, Mr. Ellsworth?”

He scowled, and made no move to reply.

“I guess it makes sense. No purpose in having them scattered all around when the railroad comes through.”

That comment did startle an answer out of him.

“Where the hell did you hear that?”

“I was at the company office in Chicago last week. Took me forever to get an appointment, but when they understood why I was asking they showed me the route they’ve mapped out for this region. Goes right through this place.”

She looked to her left.

“Can’t run it through the mountains just there. So they have to run it south until there’s a place fit to blast a pass through . . . but you already knew that, didn’t you? When I told them where I was going after I left their office, they wondered if I knew Mr. Ellsworth, who had agreed to sell them his farm at a rather handsome price per acre and promised he could secure the other properties that lay in the direct line of track.”

Mimi looked back over her shoulder in the direction of the town.

“I verified with the land agent that you’ve already secured most of the addresses they gave me. But you don’t have Charlotte Gregory’s saloon.”

“Now look here—”

“That’s why Harry had to go. It wasn’t only Charlotte you wanted. It was what she’d bring to the marriage—or at least what you imagined she’d bring. You supposed the deed came with her, didn’t you? You imagined you could sell that whole strip of land and get a railroad price for it. But Harry knew what Charlotte would want better than you ever could, so instead of leaving it all to her, he willed it jointly to her and his sister.”

“His—what?” Ellsworth shook his head in confusion. “No, Harry had a brother. Sal. Charlotte told us she’d write to him. I meant to marry her before he came.”

Mimi tilted her head and fluttered her fingers in lazy greeting.

“Salome Gregory. Charmed, I’m sure. But also pretty angry with you for killing my brother.”

Ellsworth recovered from that revelation with more speed than she’d anticipated.

“I didn’t kill anyone!”

“All right so you moved the markers or warning signs or gate or whatever it is they put up around a mineshaft and let the weather do the rest. Look, Harry may have been a selfish bastard, but he was never an idiot, and he had the most uncanny knack for looking after his own interests. It’s how he got Charlotte out from under my nose and came away here to make a living for himself. It’s how I know that the only way he’d ever end up at the bottom of a mineshaft would be if somebody undertook to put him there. And that somebody was you.”

“You can’t possibly believe—”

“I more than believe. I know it. You invited him up when you knew the weather would be taking a turn for the rotten, and you arranged to make sure he never got here. Charlotte doesn’t know why you did it; she only knows she’s scared sick of you, and when it comes to things Charlotte’s scared of, I know enough to pay attention.

“So here’s what we’re going to do. You are going to write out a full confession of your part in Harry’s death and the reason for it. You will sign over all of those properties you bought to Charlotte, because it’s really the least you can do for her, and then you will come back into town with me where I will turn you over to the tender mercies of the law and may God have mercy on your—watch it!”

But Ellsworth did not heed her warning. He dove for the rifle propped up against the pump, and the gun on Mimi’s arm barked its enforcement: once, twice, three times.

Each bullet caught him full in the chest. He looked down in astonishment, staggered back and, catching his knee against the open cistern, tumbled into the well.

“Damn,” Mimi frowned, “that’s bound to foul the water.”

She considered the yard around her a moment longer, then shrugged.

“On the whole,” she told her horse, “it’s a lot tidier than a public trial and hanging would have been. And there was always the risk he could have gotten away to make trouble for Charlotte. I wouldn’t have liked that at all.”

The horse stood placidly, a willing recipient of these confidences.

“All right,” sighed Mimi, “you’ve convinced me. It’s for the best. Come on; let’s get back to town.”

 She turned the horse’s head and they set out in that direction. The horse’s pace soon picked up in accordance with its own anticipation of its meal, and Mimi contemplated the road ahead.

“I hope it’s griddlecakes. Nothing like a stack of them on a day like this. Hot and crispy, drizzled with molasses . . . damn, it had better be griddlecakes.”

The horse trotted faster.  Mimi tilted her chin to make the most of the warmth from the sunrise.

“I could get used to life like this. Not _here_ , mind you, but . . . somewhere. With Charlotte, if she’ll have me.” A new thought landed, so welcome that it startled a smile out of her.

“She wouldn’t even have to change her name.”

This stroke of convenience so cheered her that she whistled a bright little tune all the way back to town.


End file.
